What we love…

What we’d love to see…

word highlighting as it is read, hiding of the “buy gold coins” links in a dedicated parent area, indicator on when to turn page and more help in finding interactions.

Summary

This is a nice collection of classic folk tales with some fun 3-D interactivity. I would recommend downloading today and unlocking the bonus gold coins before the offer expires (December 29th) as you can currently get 4 free books instead of the usual one.

Our Rating

Fairy Tales ~ 3D Interactive Pop-up Books is a new book app library from Amayasoft. It includes 1 free book -The Princess and the Pea, with other books available for in-app purchase. As a special Christmas gift Amayasoft is currently allowing users to download up to 3 additional books (valued at $7 total) for free – but this offer is only until December 29th so act fast! The books have “read it to me” and “read by myself” options. the narration is done by a professional British narrator, here is no word highlighting as it is read. The app also includes a bonus game “star dust” where you move around constellations until images become visible in them, there are 6 star images per book so 48 total images to find.

The titles currently available are:

• The Princess and the Pea ( Free)
• Cinderella
• Goldilocks and the three bears
• Mother Snow
• The Enormous Turnip
• The Three Little Pigs
• The Three Spinners
• The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids

To buy additional books you purchase gold coins within the app, the current offer gives you 7,000 gold coins free, most books cost 2,000 gold coins (i.e. $2), Cinderella costs 3,000. Each day the app is opened you can pick a treasure chest to win more gold coins. The in-app purchases are protected with a parental gate (where you need to turn e.g. eight, five, six into 856 to unlock) as well as your iTunes password, but there is banner “buy 8,000 gold coins” visible from the home page I would like to see this hidden in the parents area to prevent kids begging for coins or trying to buy. I would recommend leaving IAP’s switched off in settings to be on the safe side.

The books all follow a similar format and for the purposes of the review I looked at The Enormous Turnip and Mother Snow in more detail.

The books are divided into chapters, and you can access each chapter separately if you wish, so children can easily return to their favorite sections. Each chapter has 2 portions: a text section and 1 or more pop up 3-d scenes. The written section looks just like you are reading a traditional book and there is no interactivity in this part.

The 3-D pop up scenes are interactive and the child helps the characters act out the chapter they just heard, they can also tap on objects such as plants to find out more about them. In the 3-D scenes there is narration but no text apart from occasional hints on interactions.

The 3-D scenes are fun and engaging and do add to the storyline. In the Enormous Turnip the reader can help to pull the turnip by adding all the various characters in turn, help the old man in the garden and join the family as they sit down to eat the turnip. In Mother Snow they can help Anna as she explores the magic garden and visits Mother Snow. The Enormous Turnip has 3 chapters and Mother Snow has 6, both books have color illustrations in the text sections as well as the 3-D scenes. Although there are hints to some of the interactions, there is no indicator to tell you when you have found all the important interactions, and when to turn the page. At times it felt like we were missing some, for instance at the end of The Enormous Turnip the old man says “lets sing a song about pulling up The Enormous Turnip” and we couldn’t find a way to get him to sing, and in Mother Snow we couldn’t work out how to see Mina getting her reward. I’d like to see the page turn arrow flash when it is time to move on, and for important interactions (such as the song) to be marked in some way (by a hint or flashing dot perhaps) if you miss them.

Overall, this is a nice collection of classic folk tales with some fun 3-D interactivity, though in places it feels like it could do with a little extra polishing, and I would really like to see the “buy gold coins” message hidden. I would recommend downloading today and unlocking the bonus gold coins before the offer expires (December 29th) as you can currently get 4 free books instead of the usual one.

Mary is originally from England but now lives in California with her husband, dog, cat and three children. Mary and her family love Apple products and own an iPad2, iPad3, iPad Mini, iTouch, iPhone5 and several MacBook Pros. They also love cub scouts, skiing, camping and hiking. The family iPads are also used for therapy for their daughters Apraxia (speech disorder).

2 Comments

Mary
on December 23, 2014 at 6:23 am

Susan have you tried the “re-download all books” button? If you go into the parents section there are settings you can adjust and an option to redownload all books that should restore your purchased books

susan
on December 21, 2014 at 3:27 am

soo, with this app, i deleted it and reinstalled it to see if i could restore purchases. there is no way to restore purchases. i would be very very wary of spending real money on an app like that!!

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The iMums - Amanda, Alison, Mary and Grace - are four mothers from different parts of the world dedicated to informing parents about the best digital stories, educational apps, fun games and technology products available for their children. We also offer the latest news in apps for kids, interesting articles, developer interviews, free apps and regular giveaways! Read more.

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